of his funeral, and asked that on that occasion Mozart's
Requiem should be performed.] Also the story about Chopin's wish to be
buried beside Bellini is, according to the latter authority, a baseless
invention. This is also the place to dispose of the question: What was
done with Chopin's MSS.? The reader may know that the composer is said
to have caused all his MSS. to be burnt. Now, this is not true. From
Franchomme I learned that what actually took place was this. Pleyel
asked Chopin what was to be done with the MSS. Chopin replied that
they were to be distributed among his friends, that none were to be
published, and that fragments were to be destroyed. Of the pianoforte
school which Chopin is said to have had the intention to write, nothing
but scraps, if anything, can have been found.

M. Gavard pere made the arrangements for the funeral, which, owing to
the extensiveness of the preparations, did not take place till the 30th
of October. Ready assistance was given by M. Daguerry, the curate of the
Madeleine, where the funeral service was to be held; and thanks to him
permission was received for the introduction of female singers into the
church, without whom the performance of Mozart's Requiem would have been
an impossibility.

Numerous equipages [says Eugene Guinot in the Feuilleton du
Siecle of November 4] encumbered last Tuesday the large
avenues of the Madeleine church, and the crowd besieged the
doors of the Temple where one was admitted only on presenting
a letter of invitation. Mourning draperies announced a funeral
ceremony, and in seeing this external pomp, this concourse of
carriages and liveried servants, and this privilege which
permitted only the elect to enter the church, the curious
congregated on the square asked: "Who is the great lord [grand
seigneur] whom they are burying?" As if there were still
grands seigneurs! Within, the gathering was brilliant; the
elite of Parisian society, all the strangers of distinction
which Paris possesses at this moment, were to be found
there...

Many writers complain of the exclusiveness which seems to have presided
at the sending out of invitations. M. Guinot remarks in reference to
this point:

His testamentary executors [executrices] organised this
solemnity magnificently. But, be it from premeditation or from
forgetfulness, they completely neglected to invite to the
ceremony most of the representatives of the musical w